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Topic: Security issue with old hard disk (Read 2661 times)

They've recently setup a new hard disk in my notebook (gone from 40G to 80G) and i had just installed XPHome (with no data) on the ol' 40. After they finished the work, they failed to give me back my disk and i forgot to ask them for it.I'm out of town and was wondering if it was worth asking it back?I now realize that they also made a few bucks on it (by keeping it) but i can live with that.

If the 40gig disk previous had data on it, but you installed XP (and did a format in the process), some of the old data will still be recoverable. Most people probably wouldn't bother trying a recover, especially since they don't get a "blank" disk (ie., if you had just formatted it but not installed XP, or if you had deleted the partitions or whatever).

I guess what to do depends on what kind of data you had on it. In a similar scenario, I wouldn't bother - (almost ) all my sensitive data is encrypted, so at most a badguy would be able to tell my browsing history, see some (non-xrated) picture of me and my friends, stare puzzled at passwords.exe (yes, I drink my own kool-aid), et cetera.

If you had credit-card info or similar lying around in plain.txt files, you might want to call them and get the disk back, though... just in case.

Security issues aside, you could also purchase an external drive enclosure and install you old drive in it. Then you'd have a nice backup drive to use. I'd tell them "nice try guys" and ask for your old drive back.

Security issues aside, you could also purchase an external drive enclosure and install you old drive in it. Then you'd have a nice backup drive to use. I'd tell them "nice try guys" and ask for your old drive back.